Publicly owned rail services?

I'm sorry if I sound patronising but all this groundhog stuff is so pointless. If people won't see beyond the national finances are like household finances myth how on earth are we going to get any change happening? - well quite - I keep grinding on about this ad nauseam.

And again from MaisieD - Government has to spend money before it can tax it back. If the government didn't continually spend into the economy the supply of money available to everyone would get smaller and smaller as companies and individuals took their profits out of the economy and the government took it out via taxation.

We have to spend on public services, not just to make sure our country is compassionate and moral, but so people get incomes which they can spend to boost the economy and manufacturing.

The current state of the railways is embarrassing and shaming. The farces that are created by multiple companies are the daily experience of travellers. I tried to book a journey that involved changing train companies en route - I had to contact each one separately to find out if their trains were affected by strikes. I once sat in the Severn tunnel for hours after a breakdown, as the company involved would not pay another company to shunt us out, so we had to wait for a train from their company.

Of course compulsory purchase would be required in the case of the water industry. In the case of compulsory purchase of land for infrastructure such as HS2 it isn’t difficult or time consuming to reach an open market value and statutory provisions enable entry to be made on the land before the whole of the compensation is paid, which is often years later in the case of non-residential property. Interest runs from the date of entry. It would be interesting to see how the compulsory purchase of the water industry could proceed - I don’t say it’s impossible, but it would be phenomenally expensive and unlikely to be achieved in a single government term.
Of course rail contracts can simply not be renewed,^depending on their provisions ^

I have recently returned from a holiday in Germany. I was very impressed with the trains. Double decker carriages and spotlessly clean inside. The German government has introduced a monthly, Euro 49, travel card. You can travel on trains, buses and trams throughout Germany. The idea is to reduce Co2 emissions. Something we, in the UK, can't have due to transport services being privatised. The UK train I travelled home on, was absolutely filthy. Foreign visitors must think we are dirty and don't care.

Sadly we can't 'do' double decker trains because of our Victorian railway bridges. They're too low... Probably our tunnels are too low as well.

P.S We are a very dirty country. There seems to be no getting away from that fact...☹

Having been a victim of the trans Pennine service on many occasions I am glad their contract is ending. The train services in many parts aren't working so may be time to renationalise.

I am surprised that the general public tolerates the railways in this country. Expensive, unreliable and dirty. Other countries manage to provide good public transport for its citizens, why can’t we? Surely it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility? Of course we are subjects, and only incidentally citizens.
If a march was organised, I’d join it.

“Why do people always regard nationalised services as one way money pits?

Why don’t more people realise the present contract model is just that?”

Because in the past they were, because the management was so bad, private enterprise was supposed to be more efficient. Some were many were not.

I think most of us realise now how utterly stupid the privatisation of the railways was. The nationalised rail system may not have been 100%perfect but it was infinitely better than the present system which is not only expensive, but complicated, inefficient and unaccountable. Let"s hope this just starts things off and we return to a national rail service.

The Tories have already nationalized nearly half of the rail system Transpennine Express is the latest, before that South Eastern 2021. LNER 2018. West Coast Avanti is the next target, wether it improves the service or reduces cost we will see. Currently the real cost of a rail journey is 3 times the fare, that is comparable to other countries in Europe.

Germanshepherdsmum

It’s interesting to read what your husband, who has far more knowledge and expertise about this than any of us, has to say Ash. It’s so easy to say we should do X, whether X is actually achievable and if so at what cost is another matter entirely. I have said this before in connection with calls to bring the water and other industries into public ownership - can anyone imagine what it would cost to buy out the private companies? The government cannot simply acquire them without paying full compensation to the stakeholders.

But if you believe in "balancing the books" as per Thatcher, then you accept that the govt will have acquired an asset by borrowing. Loan on one asset on the other.

In the autumn before covid we travelled by train to Florence, via Zurich so that we could go on the Bernina Express. This involved an overnight stay in Zurich, in an hotel close to the railway station. That cost 250 euros. The cost of return journey - Limoges, Paris, Zurich, Chur for the Bernina Express, Tirano, Milan and Florence; return via Turin, Paris, Limoges. The cost of all that, for 2 was less than the Zurich hotel cost.

Dinahmo

In the autumn before covid we travelled by train to Florence, via Zurich so that we could go on the Bernina Express. This involved an overnight stay in Zurich, in an hotel close to the railway station. That cost 250 euros. The cost of return journey - Limoges, Paris, Zurich, Chur for the Bernina Express, Tirano, Milan and Florence; return via Turin, Paris, Limoges. The cost of all that, for 2 was less than the Zurich hotel cost.

We’ve been considering a similar trip, it would be nice not to have to drive for a change.

An asset that the is never intended to be disposed of Dinahmo - the only value being the yield, whatever it might be.

Not true. Public assets appear, essentially, on balance sheets and are used, in that context, for all sorts of investment and ratings decisions.

A lot of public assets are capable of being realised. The whole point of taking the railways back into public ownership would be to retain them in perpetuity - hence their value would be the yield they are capable of producing.

The CBI, who are opposed to the idea, on renationalising the railways:

… the government would be acquiring an asset on their balance sheet

Of course it’s an asset. Have I said otherwise? It’s simply not the usual type of asset which can be realised and therefore would not be valued in the usual way.

The railway system has 2 types of asset, firstly the infrastructure, railway lines, signaling, buildings all with very long life. Secondly rolling stock and with a life of maybe 20 yrs.
If you want to run a railway system you could lease the rolling stock in some way, the infrastructure has to be continuously maintained. Currently that is done by Network Rail which is a government regulated company that does not pay dividends any surplus is reinvested.

Re closing stations, where I come from there have been quite a few stations reopened after being shut in the breeching era, in one of the cases, there have been a lot of houses built so a station is an attraction, another again lots of people that work in the bigger cities have moved there and 10 mins on the train is so much better than driving and looking for parking, and also one is for a tourist area, it brings in a lot of money to the area

Beeching did what he was told by Ernest Marples (Transport Secretary at the time) and Marples was heavily into road construction. They "claim" to have assessed passenger usage as the basis, but chose their times carefully, e.g. Ilfracombe was measured in the winter. He also made the error of assuming that if a local station was closed, the passenger would get in their car and travel to the nearest main line station. They didn't, they drove all the way. Since then, the infrastructure/alignments have been sold off of built on, so there is no way back. We will only have a main line set of railways and carrying more good by rail is a pipe dream as all the rail yards/siding that could have access to the road network have long gone. The bus service in anything but large town/cities is atrocious, so car is the only option!

here here

The chief problem with the privatised utility industries like water, gas, rail, etc., is they run on the profit motive so it makes sense for them to maximise shareholder profits and minimise investment in the business. All that is exacerbated by foreign, distant ownership which cares little about the service provided. They will never provide the service we expect until they are nationalised and public investment put in to upgrade them. The national finances are not like the housekeeping budget despite Thatcher's lie so the money can be found as it is for projects like HS2.

at the end of the day what ever the rail company calls itself, changes its colours on the coach's, and supply new uniforms
it will be the same staff,

although there MIGHT be SOME new Managers.
Nothing will change.

‘Decent’ and ‘publicly owned’ in the same sentence could be an oxymoron! And with 44% of all public spending being earmarked for the beleaguered NHS, I doubt that there is much left over for rail investment when one considers education, housing (joke!) social care etc. And of course the spiralling costs of the unsolved immigration question. Perhaps utilities, of which British Rail could have been considered one, should not have been sold off in the hysteria of the Thatcher years? I can’t see it has benefited the taxpayer or country very much apart from the wealthy who bought into them and maybe some of the public who were encouraged to buy shares (and council houses).

Our Government pays foreign countries to run our railways and if you look at Spain and France their trains are great and cheap because of UK tax payers